Europe 1789-1920, 1922r.

Europe 1789-1920, 1922r. - Edward Turner

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 Excerpt: ...forms of misery and distress. There were many poor people in Germany, toiling for scanty wages and working for very long hours, but nowhere the fearful poverty and physical deterioration to be seen in the slums of the English cities or the worst places in the United States. The German government was guaranteeing a certain minimum to its people, to make them content, and to provide that the state might not be weakened by losing their service. All this contributed, moreover, to the centralization of the powers of the government and the greater supremacy of the state. Usually the progress of industrialism, which caused large numbers of people to come together in manufacturing centers, and the spread of education, which made the masses of the people more capable of self-government and also more interested in governing themselves, had brought about larger participation by the people in their government and increasing desire for more share. So it had been for a long time in England and in France, in the Scandinavian countries, in Belgium and Holland, and there had long been persistent efforts made by a few people in Russia. In Germany, where one of the widest and most effective systems of education had prevailed throughout the nineteenth century, and where for the past fifty years there had been unceasing drift of people from the farms to the cities, the progress of democracy always seemed very slow before the disasters of the Great War. This was partly because of old associations and tradi-Causes tions. In England self-government and democracy grew up slowly and painfully through a long course of time; they were inherited by the English colonists of America and there developed under still more favorable conditions; in France they were violently begun during the ..